AutoX mode bugs

[thelusiv]

Last time I played around with AutoX mode it didn't work (the car just fell forever). Now playing around it actually seems to work pretty well. However there are some issues:

• The area to make a track in is way too small. The best I can do for a track is a circle, on which I never leave first gear in the MI. Pretty boring. It needs to be at least 500x500 ft, maybe much bigger. For scale, an outline of a car should be visible to the designer.
  
• The idea of laying out the course with gates (sets of 2 cones) is good but it makes it hard to tell where to go. It would be better if cones were repeated every X units of distance (maybe 1 meter at the least) if the cone behind it is farther away than that distance. Also, pointer cones are often used in autocrosses, these are cones laying on their sides pointing in the direction of the turn. For instance, on a right hand turn, every other cone making up the "outer wall" of the turn would be on its side, like this: /\ |> /\ |> /\ |> /\ It would also be nice to connect the cones with a white "chalk" line.
  
• The area outside of the cones and in the grass is way too bumpy. Some cars get stuck when leaving the pavement. Others flip over on the grass. The pavement should not be bumpy at all, instead when a driver goes outside the cones he should be disqualified (see below) or given a time penalty if a cone is run over.
  
• If the car is to be affected by hitting a cone, it should be only when the cone is directly run over by one of the wheels, and the wheel should temporarily lose traction.
  
• There should be time penalties of two seconds for every cone struck by the car.
  
• The timer should be reset to 00:00.000 if the car misses a gate entirely (drives around the wrong side of a cone without hitting the cone - this is called a DNF or "did not finish" and disqualifies the run). Also, the timer should stop once the driver reaches the last gate. Currently it doesn't reset until the driver reaches the first gate again, like a racing circuit. Although some autocrosses do have multi-lap setups I don't think it's necessary for this stage of the AutoX feature.
  
• After the driver passes the last gate and comes to a complete stop, the car should automatically be put back at the starting line, and get a new countdown.
  
• Slaloms are typically done with just a straight line of cones, each with a pointer cone telling you which direction to go around it. For instance:
  
  Code:

  |> /\


      /\ <|


   |> /\


      /\ <|
  would be a slalom that would be gone around left, right, left, right (from bottom to top). This is not a big priority because currently, the same slalom could still be made like this:
  
  Code:

  /\     /\


/\    /\


      /\     /\


/\    /\
  The only drawback to this is that the outside cones limit the driver's ability to choose the line to take through the slalom.
  

If most or all of those things were fixed, the autocross feature would work very well and be very fun. It goes without saying that we need a way to store multiple course setups, but that's not too hard to add once it's working a little better.

[joevenzon]

I agree, it's way too small. How far did you get on your parking lot model?

[thelusiv]

I didn't get anywhere on a parking lot model. I have no time right now, maybe I'll get to it sometime...it wouldn't really take that long to do...sigh.

I thought of a way to add extra cones without drastically changing the way the courses are currently designed. Perhaps instead of just a "Place" button for placing cones, there could be "set gates", as well as a mode for adding single standing cones, as well as single pointer cones. If a player hits a single standing cone, it counts 2 seconds off his time, but if he hits a single pointer cone it doesn't count (this reflects typical autocross rules). Pointer cones will be need to be able to be rotated by the designer to get them pointed the right way and should be represented as a triangle during course design.

[thelusiv]

Alright, I've been working on a huge parking lot "track". It needs some simple texturing and it will be mostly done. I have only had a little time but being without internet for a few days I figured, why not. It is basically a giant flat paved area, with some grass around it and a wall beyond that.